Its photograph appeared on the May 3, 1913 cover of 'The Survey Journal'.
The child in the statue represents child prostitution. The positioning
of the barely pubescent girl, in full undress, in the middle of her
“auction” for sexual servitude, with her hands held behind her back
graphically illustrates her bondage. The man who holds her is shouting
out, perhaps her price and her age. St Leger Eberle produced many
pieces as a form of social protest against child prostitution. She was
especially focused on children of the Lower East Side of New York City
when that part of the city was full of immigrants and of resulting
social problems. With the eye of a photojournalist and without
sentimentality, she recorded the lives of these people including the
plight of immigrant females.

(info compiled from the following sources: AskART and Girl for Sale )More about Abastenia St Leger Eberle, in Notable american women: a biographical dictionary, ET. James, JWJames, PS Boyer, 1974: <Inspired
by the writings of Jane Adams, she became convinced that the artist
“has no right to work as an individualist without responsibility to
others. He is the specialized eye of society... The artist must see for
the people – reveal them to themselves and to each other” (Survey, May
3, 1913). Her most outspoken work in this vein was “The White Slave”,
which depicts a naked young American girl, hands bound behind her,
being auctioned off by a lecherous old man. A reflection of current
concern over organized prostitution, as voiced the same year in
Elizabeth Robin's novel 'My Little Sister', “The White Slave” was exhibited at the famous Armory Show in New York in 1913.>

<(...)
Young girls are bought and sold daily for sex in San Diego County. Some
are forced into the life. Others are coerced. (...) ...a University of
Pennsylvania study reveals up to 300,000 children in the United States
are at risk of becoming forced sex workers. [San Diego Police Detective
James] Hunter said pimps recruit online, at schools, malls and bus
stands. Many of the girls are foster kids, runaways, and even disabled.
“They are just broken souls," Hunter said.Pimps exploit that
vulnerability.“They’ll bring a girl in," Hunter said. "They will
manipulate her. They will break her down completely and then they will
build her back up the way they want her to be.”(...) “You have
entrepreneurs that are saying 'wow, I can make $300,000 per girl, per
year tax-free.' And in a stable you’ll have anywhere from four to 10
girls. And you do the math, they’re making money. The girls are
reusable everyday. They’re just a product to these guys.” A product
that must be branded. Lisa’s pimp ordered her to get a tattoo of his
name on the inside of her bottom lip. “When I’m not focused on him, his
goals, he would always say,`look in the mirror and see whose name is
that.'“The health risks to these girls are also profound according
to San Diego Deputy District Attorney Gretchen Means. “We deal with
horrible stories of girls ages 11, 12, 13 years old who have STDs that
are so bad, they cannot walk and they have to have hysterectomies.”
(...)> full text:Pimps Recruiting Underage Girls In San Diego Through Force And Coercion